Technical Field
This application relates to managing power usage in data center components.
Description of Related Art
Data centers provide computational and storage resources for executing applications and storing data. IT organizations and service providers may have multiple data centers that they use to conduct their business. The organizations run variety of business critical applications and services such as, internet access, email, database, numerous applications programs and the like, using servers and storage systems at the data centers.
Data centers that are provisioned with a large number of hardware resources in order to meet maximum required demand levels thus consume high levels of power. The cost of purchasing power is becoming an increasingly significant burden in the operation of modern data centers. Although data centers are built to perform at optimal performance levels, during periods of low processing demand from enterprise applications, idle data center servers, storage arrays, individual processors, and/or cores within single servers often continue to consume power.
As a result, the cost of electricity is becoming a significant portion of the total cost of operation in many data centers. Further, the power consumption rate permitted is sometimes limited by contracts with power suppliers. Such data centers are not permitted under their contracts to use an amount of power over a specified limit, and raising the limit, will result in a higher monthly fee for the data center. Thus, data center operators need to monitor the tradeoff between application availability and power consumption costs.
As with data centers, industrial and consumer demand for electricity has continued to increase as well. This additional demand may, and often does, outstrip the grid's power capacity resulting in brownouts and/or rolling or full blackouts. In an effort to address such situations utilities may enter into Power Purchase Agreements with large users of electricity where a discount may be offered if the user agrees to lowering usage during peak demand periods upon notification from the utility. Also during exceptional conditions such as lost of generating capacity due to power generating or transmissions failure resulting in brown out conditions where data centers must either run with reduced power or shutdown